The Hindustan Times January 28, 2003
Indo-US exercises could blunt Pak air power
By S Rajagopalan
Pakistan is upset with plans for a grand Indo-US air combat exercise that could provide Indians valuable tips on how to blunt Islamabad's ability to use fighter jets to launch nuclear weapons.
The issue has so agitated Pakistan that its Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri, now on a visit here, has gone public to indicate that he would raise the matter with Defence Minister Donald Rumsfeld.
The planned exercise and training, slated to take place later this year or in early 2004, will represent a new dimension to Indo-US defence relations which have steadily intensified over the last one year or so.
Ahead of his meetings with the Bush administration, Kasuri warned in the course of an interview to the Washington Post that the US move would have a "negative fallout" on its relations with Pakistan.
"I don't think it is politically advisable at all for the military and the United States government to do anything which would further complicate matters for the government of Pakistan," he said.
The US, however, has different views on the subject. James Law, a spokesman of the US Air Force's headquarters for Pacific operations, defended the exercise plans, saying it was "consistent with President Bush's strategic objectives in South Asia".
Significantly, Law has gone on record saying: "We would not want any neighbouring country to get alarmed y these exercises." The ambitious exercise itself is said to be in its "early planning stages".
According to the Post report, it will be for the first time that fighter jets built by the US and Russia will be pitted against one another in an exercise. The US plans to fly its top air-to-air fighter, the F-15C, against the Russian Su-30s acquired by India over the last six years.
The Pentagon reportedly wants India to fly the Su-30s instead of the ageing MiG-29s in its fleet so as to test the comparative "dogfighting" potential of the F-15C, which itself is an old machine, having been inducted into the US Air Force in 1979.
The joint exercise, it is said, might enable Indian pilots to learn better ways of deterring Pakistan from using its American F-16s to threaten India with nuclear strikes. The Pakistan Air Force has a fleet of 32 F-16s.
GlobalSecurity.org, an independent defence consulting body, has been quoted as saying that Pakistan has "supposedly practiced" with its F-16s a toss-bombing technique that could be used to deliver nuclear bombs.
The planned exercise will be the most superior in terms of combat-orientation, it is said. The earlier one at Agra involved military airlift operations, while the one that followed in Alaska involved parachute jumps.
Copyright © 2003, The Hindustan Times
